Knowledge And Decisions

Over the years since World War II, the military supremacy of the United States has disappeared, and what has been called the “nuclear stalemate” has emerged. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have enough nuclear weapons to annihilate the major population centers of the other nation several times over — “overkill,” as it is called. However, nuclear “overkill” may not be as unprecedented as it appears nor decisive as an indication of negligible incremental returns to continued military development. It may well be that when France surrendered to Nazi Germany in 1940, it had enough bullets left to kill every German soldier twice over, but such theoretical calculations would have meant little to a conquered nation. Would anyone say that a lone policeman confronting three criminals had “overkill” because his revolver contained enough bullets to kill them all twice over? On the contrary, depending on how close they were, and with what weapons they were armed, he might be in a very precarious position.

In an era of sophisticated radar defenses and missile interceptor systems, the only way to actually deliver a nuclear weapon on target might be to saturate the enemy defense system with more incoming missiles than it can handle — that is, with a number of missiles representing extravagant “overkill” in terms of what would be theoretically necessary if the enemy were as defenseless as a sitting duck. Since both the United States and the Soviet Union have missile defense systems, theoretical examples of “overkill” — if taken literally — represent either naiveté or demagoguery, depending upon how they are used. As long as the technology of attack and defense systems keeps advancing, there is no point at which we can comfortably say, “enough,” because it is not the size of the arsenal that matters but the ability to deliver it through enemy defense systems that matters. Military forces have always had overkill. It is doubtful if most of the bullets fired in most wars ever hit anybody, and a substantial number of soldiers never fire at all. Yet no one would claim that it is futile to arm soldiers going into combat or that it is a waste to issue more bullets than there are enemy soldiers.

The history of the Soviet-American military balance has been essentially a history of the relative decline of the American position. Whereas the United States in 1965 had several hundred more nuclear missiles than the U.S.S.R., by 1975 the Soviets had more than a thousand more nuclear missiles than the United States.²⁴⁵ Whereas the United States in 1965 had more military personnel in both conventional and nuclear attack forces than the U.S.S.R., by 1975 that too had been reversed.²⁴⁶ Most other components of nuclear military power had also changed to the detriment of the United States in this decade.²⁴⁷ In Europe, the Soviet bloc Warsaw Pact outnumbers the Western NATO allies in troops (50 percent more), tanks (three times as many), airplanes (40 percent more) and artillery pieces (three times as many), with the lone Western military advantage being in tactical nuclear weapons (twice as many).²⁴⁸ Tactical nuclear weapons — the West's one advantage — have the serious disadvantage that a defending nation risks endangering its own people with radioactive fallout if it uses the weapon against an invader. The invading forces face no comparable risk, since its tactical nuclear weapons would be used near someone else’s civilian population.